Needlin'

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Purse for Rianne's birthday

Pattern: the Chinese Charm Bag from the original Stitch 'n BitchYarn: Manos del Uruguay in color 115Completed April 15, 2006

Knitting with Manos was AWESOME. I highly recommend it. It's handspun, kettle-dyed and is the product of a women's co-op in Uruguay. Wonderful texture and great colors that have some complexity and variation without the obviousness of variegated yarns. Because it's handspun, it's not completely uniform--some parts are fluffy and others are kind of stringy--but that was fine for this project. Oh, and it smells a little funny because of the dye and isn't the softest wool you can find. But who cares! It was great to knit with.

That is, once I got past winding the ball. This was my first time working with a hank of yarn that was twisted instead of already in pull-from-the-center status, and winding it into a ball was slightly frustrating. But I only had to do it once! I bought two skeins but only needed one (so some other lucky person might get a version of this purse someday).

I used handles from JoAnn and added a dragonfly button instead of a Chinese charm, because Rianne loves dragonflies. The lining is warm chocolate brown flannel. I should have made the lining (and the bag itself, for that matter) a tad smaller, but it came out okay in the end. Adding the handles is what really got me excited about the bag. Until then it was a nice knitted tube, but the handles really make it cool.

I'm psyched about this finished project! And Rianne is a purse junkie, so I hope she likes it too. :)

P.S. I got my first e-mail from a reader that didn't know me before I began blogging, so in tribute, please take the time to go visit Girl is Crafty!